Unconventional Warfare

The fleeing sniper cranked the throttle on his street bike and raced out of the building. He was pretty close to panicked. He had gone too far, pissed off the Americans. There was nothing left but to run for it.

What had started out as easy money from influence peddling against the arrogant Yankees had quite suddenly backfired. The Juárez organization on the border was wrecked. Their commandant butchered. It was time to take the money and run. Too bad, so sad. Now it was time to go.

He gunned the powerful motorcycle across the abandoned asphalt parking lot of the old factory and out the front gate. The American investigating team had made their escape and it was time for him to do the same. He used the toe of his boot to push the bike into a higher gear and he cranked his wrist, holding the throttle wide open.

He shot through the gate and out onto the access road lined with shacks of aluminum siding and cardboard. Suddenly up ahead, next to the rusting derelict of a train engine parked and forgotten on the old tracks, the sniper saw one of the American agents, the big blond bastard, standing out in the open with his carbine. The man flipped him the middle finger and the sniper locked up his bike, sending it into a slide and changing direction before the fool opened fire.

His rear tire caught on the hard-packed earth and he felt the motorcycle start to respond. Suddenly he saw movement and looked up. Too late he saw the American’s vehicle, a massive SUV, rush out of a narrow alley and head directly at him. Behind the blacked-out visor of his helmet the sniper screamed.

Blancanales’s face was a smooth, flat affect, as expressionless as a mask as he rammed the big vehicle into the man. The heavy bumper struck the Japanese bike and sent it skipping end-over-end down the road, tossing the rider like a rag doll in a spinning pinwheel of limbs.

The corrupt Mexican law-enforcement agent struck the ground and bounced, his limbs almost instantly folding into unnatural angles. Blancanales hit the brakes on the SUV to allow the motorcycle to bounce away and avoid becoming entangled with it. He watched the figure of the ambush assassin rebound off the ground like a rubber ball and sprawl in an ungainly slide onto the weed-choked railroad tracks.

“Oh, that’s going to leave a mark,” Schwarz muttered, and winced.

Blancanales twisted the wheel and threw the SUV into a slide as he brought the vehicle to a stop. He opened his door and bailed while across from him the Able Team electronics expert did the same. Both men brought their compact carbines up to provide cover.

From his decoy position Carl Lyons raced toward the fallen man, his own carbine covering the motionless figure. Blancanales sized up the situation and immediately turned to provide cover outward as his two teammates converged on the broken body.

Lyons knelt and put two fingers against the motorcycle rider’s throat while Schwarz covered him. Lyons pulled some clothing to one side and felt again. He looked up at Schwarz and shook his head.

“No pulse,” he said.

“Yank the helmet,” Schwarz said.

Setting the M-4 down, Lyons quickly undid the chin-strap and pulled the helmet free. The man’s head bounced oddly and came to rest at an almost obscene angle. The neck of the assassin was clearly broken.

“Well, I guess we’re done in Juárez,” Lyons muttered.

“Shake him down for a cell phone or something, it might pay off,” Schwarz suggested. “I’m sorry, guys. I know we needed him alive. I didn’t realize he’d be riding a bike instead of driving a car when I set up the plan.”

“Shit happens,” Lyons said.

“Find anything?” Blancanales called.

Lyons looked up. “No, he was running clean.”

“Let’s get out of here, then,” Schwarz said, looking around. “The natives are starting to get curious.”

Lyons stood and nodded.

“Let’s roll.”

Kenya

“DOESN’T THAT JUST BEAT everything?”

McCarter’s voice was so dull with disappointment it barely held a trace of his accent. Beside him in the SUV, Hawkins just slowly shook his head.

“It’s the French,” he said. His disbelief only served to thicken his Texas drawl. “Why did it have to be the goddamn French?”

McCarter didn’t have an answer.

Their vehicle was parked on a bluff overlooking the river. Halfway across the dark brown waters they could clearly see the commercial ferry taking cars across to the other side.

Based on its current speed, the two Phoenix Force members estimated it’d be another half hour before the ferry unloaded its cargo on the far side and made its way back to pick them up.

To make matters worse the ferry was loaded with the French racing team. The laughter of the other racers was clearly audible as they powered away across the water. One of the Frenchmen lifted up his arm and flipped off the two men.

“I guess I had that coming,” Hawkins said.

“They started before us,” McCarter pointed out. “So the fact that we’ve caught up to them again, means our times are good.”

“Sure,” Hawkins conceded. “But I’d feel a hell of a lot better with them at our six than running flat out ahead of us.”

“What do you want to do?”

“According to the map there’s another crossing down the river,” Hawkins answered. “We get there and across, we could gain even more time.”

“Better damned if we do than if we don’t?”

“I sure as hell don’t want to burn daylight just sitting here if we have another option.”

McCarter released the parking brake and put the idling SUV into gear. “Let’s hit it,” he agreed.

The SUV powered across the open terrain.

McCarter navigated the riverbank for almost a mile until it twisted in a great bend. Reading the map beside him, Hawkins instructed him to cut straight cross-country to meet the waterway where it looped back.

Still battered by the lack of a road, the two men found the going relatively easy across a flat stretch of grassland. McCarter kept one eye on his watch while Hawkins used the dashboard compass, his much abused race map and the GPS unit to coordinate their position exactly. Soon he was plagued by a constant, low-grade headache. As they pressed on without an update on Monica Fischer’s condition, their worry mounted.

Copses of trees proved the most difficult obstacle to navigate but the route called for them to ford several small streams along the way. McCarter gunned the vehicle through one such obstacle and clawed his way up the other side and the men found themselves on an immense plain.

“That’s it,” Hawkins said. “That’s the last stream for a while and we’re on the veldt before the river crossing.”

According to their plan McCarter slowed and stopped the vehicle. Hawkins quickly got out, retrieved a grease gun from the cargo space and crawled under the vehicle to do his preventive maintenance.

As Hawkins worked, McCarter slipped out from behind the wheel to stretch. On a whim he crawled up onto the roof of the SUV and scanned his surroundings. The wild distance seemed vast as he scanned the terrain.

To the west he saw a small group of water buffalo wallowing in the mud beside the small stream they had just crossed. Beyond them a herd of giraffes moved easily across the grassland.

He felt at peace despite his exhaustion. The cares and worries of his singular occupation seemed far away. He felt the burden of his responsibilities lift off his shoulders like a bird taking flight.

He looked at his watch and noted how much time had passed. He was pleased. He calculated that their alternate route would put them in front of the Frenchmen in another hour.

“We might just win this thing, after all,” he called down to Hawkins.

Hawkins answered from beneath the rear axle but his reply was drowned out by the ringing of the satellite phone on McCarter’s belt. The Briton pulled it free and answered, figuring it was Manning with an update on Fischer’s condition.